{"id":48604,"date":"2025-08-06T19:43:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T19:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/48604\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T19:43:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T19:43:15","slug":"documentary-filmmaker-suggests-napalm-girl-photo-credit-was-changed-out-of-loyalty-to-nick-ut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/48604\/","title":{"rendered":"Documentary Filmmaker Suggests ‘Napalm Girl’ Photo Credit Was Changed Out of Loyalty to Nick Ut"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Children<\/a>Gary Knight suggests that Horst Faas changed the credit because he felt a debt of gratitude toward Nick Ut. | Associated Press <\/p>\n

The executive producer of The Stringer documentary has suggested that photo editor Horst Faas changed the credit on the famous Napalm Girl photo out of loyalty to Nick Ut. <\/p>\n

In a lengthy Rolling Stone article<\/a>, Gary Knight from the VII Foundation and photographer himself speculates that Faas\u2019s loyalty to Ut was born out of mentoring Ut\u2019s brother, Hu\u1ef3nh Thanh M\u1ef9, who died while working for the Associated Press (AP) during the Vietnam War. <\/p>\n

The basis of The Stringer film is that Ut did not take the famous photograph, officially titled The Terror of War but more commonly known as Napalm Girl, and that an unknown freelancer called Thanh Nghe is the real author of the image. <\/p>\n

The claims stem from photo editor Carl Robinson who was working at the Saigon Bureau the day the negatives arrived and who left one of the most famous photographs of all time on the cutting room floor. Faas, who was Chief of Photos in Saigon, spotted the rejected photo and insisted it be sent to New York. Robinson claims that he was also told to change the credit to Nick Ut.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>Horst Faas. | Wikipedia<\/a> <\/p>\n

Knight suggests that Faas changed the credit from Nghe to Ut to make him more secure at AP and to partially make up for the death of his brother. \u201cHe would have had no loyalty to the stringer Nghe, having never met him,\u201d Knight writes. <\/p>\n

AP\u2019s Struggles in Vietnam <\/p>\n

Knight also suggests that Faas was keen to get an AP staff photographer\u2019s credit on the photo as he immediately realized the power of Napalm Girl \u2014 which proved to be prophetic. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe 1972 offensive had been wretched for AP, which was being regularly beaten by its main rival, United Press International,\u201d Knight writes, who adds that this is why AP brought in \u201clegendary\u201d photographer and regional chief photo editor Faas. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis was not a moment for an \u2018icon of all time\u2019 to be transmitted with the byline of a stringer, underscoring that the AP staffer had missed the photo,\u201d Knight says. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>A still from The Stringer that shows freelancer Nguyen Thanh Nghe at the scene of Napalm Girl. <\/p>\n

Furthermore, Knight claims that famous war photographer Tim Page<\/a> once told him that \u201cFaas had put his name on the work of Vietnamese photographers and taken credit for them as his own.\u201d Knight claims to have been told other, similar stories about Haas swapping credits to suit his interests, including taking credit for a Pulitzer Prize. Faas died in 2012. <\/p>\n

\u201cHad Faas grown to rationalize occasionally changing the credit on photographs over nearly a decade of war? Would this explain how he might have taken something from a stringer he didn\u2019t know, given AP and the younger brother of his dead colleague the kudos, and enhanced his standing at the agency?\u201d Knight asks. <\/p>\n

The fallout from the documentary continues after World Press Photo suspended Ut\u2019s credit<\/a> on The Terror of War. But there has been pushback from the photojournalist community with over 400 photographers signing a letter<\/a> demanding World Press Photo restore Ut\u2019s credit. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gary Knight suggests that Horst Faas changed the credit because he felt a debt of gratitude toward Nick…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48605,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[41367,64,63,1691,134,41368,41369,344,41370,41371,41372,41373,41374,41375],"class_list":{"0":"post-48604","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-associatedpress","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-documentary","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-garyknight","14":"tag-horstfaas","15":"tag-movies","16":"tag-napalmgirl","17":"tag-nickut","18":"tag-photocredit","19":"tag-terrorofwar","20":"tag-thestringer","21":"tag-vietnamwar"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}